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Line departments, by far the most numerous, are in most cases government museums administered by a department of the national, state, provincial, county, or municipal government. However, line department museums also include most university museums – such as a geology museum that is administered by the university’s earth sciences division – and corporate museums, such as the automotive museums maintained by each of Germany’s car manufacturers. In governance terms, all these museums have in common that they are administered as a line department of a larger organization that owns their buildings and collections.

Government line departments may report to a minister responsible for culture, education, tourism, or other government sectors. Although the Director of the National Palace Museum in Taipei is an appointed member of Taiwan’s governing cabinet, all other government line department museums around the world report through the relevant government hierarchy.

Specialized museums may report to ministers of their relevant departments – thus an agricultural museum may be part of a federal or provincial department of agriculture, and many postal museums and communication museums are an integral part of national postal or telecommunication services. Among the most numerous museum types in many countries (including the United States) are the military museums governed by the unit of the armed forces that they represent – regimental museums.

If line department museums have boards of trustees, they are usually advisory only. Sometimes called visiting committees, these advisory boards may have a broader or a more narrowly specified scope, but in any case they remain advisory to the governing body, which retains authority and responsibility for the institution. The mission, mandate, goals, objectives, and policies of these museums are established within guidelines set by the organizations of which they are a part – government departments, university disciplines, or divisions of a corporation. The larger organization owns the buildings and the collections, while staff, including the director, are employees of that organization – civil servants in the case of government line departments, university or corporate employees in the other examples. Recruitment, evaluation, and disciplinary processes are all subject to the policies of the larger organization – meaning civil service procedures for government line department museums – often resulting in a relatively static institution with limited capacity for change. Few of these museums have membership programs, and volunteers are usually scarce, since the public perception of many of these museums is that all tasks should be accomplished by paid employees, especially if these are taxpayer-supported, as in the case of government line department museums.

Funding for the operation of line department museums is in most cases a line item in the budget of the government, university, or corporate department of which they are a part. They may also qualify for grants, but their primary financial support comes from regular appropriations. Most line department museums offer free admission, but even if admission is charged, self-generated revenue – whether from ticket sales, retail, rentals, or food services – in most cases does not benefit the museum directly, with profits (sometimes all revenue) going into the general funds of the government, university, or corporation, not benefiting the museum directly; in the worst instances, government appropriations may even be reduced commensurate with any increase in self-generated funds. Such a financial structure has two obvious drawbacks:

1 1. The museum has no motivation to enhance visitor services that could generate additional revenue. As a result, visitor services in government line department museums around the world are often notoriously poor.

2 2. Annual appropriations are subject to periodic cutbacks, especially affecting government line department museums in times of economic difficulty. Since these cutbacks usually constrain the funds available for programs that may or may not be offered by the museum, rather than the salaries of relatively fixed civil service positions, over many years the salaries tend to creep up as a proportion of the budget, resulting in a dearth of operating resources for programming.